Expensive, even for an Apple product. No internal access to processor or graphics cards. Warranty is relatively short.

Bottom Line

The Apple Mac Pro (2013) is a powerhouse in a surprisingly small package, leveraging innovative design and extreme connectivity to completely re-imagine the professional desktop workstation.

There's no ignoring it, the new Apple Mac Pro (2013) is stunning. Aside from the occasional joke about the resemblance to more mundane objectsgarbage cans, coffee makers, wine chillersthe Mac Pro (2013) has been grabbing attention because of it's complete lack of resemblance to every other boxy desktop on the market. But that distinctive look isn't the only thing that's different. The Mac Pro (2013) is a powerhouse in an astonishingly small and compact chassis, with a design that embraces innovations in manufacturing, cooling technology, and embodies concepts that may very well shape the future of the desktop PC. There are plenty of details to discuss, but one stands outthe Apple Mac Pro (2013) is our new Editors' Choice for single processor workstation desktops, and one of the best premium desktops period.

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Design and Features
After three years without a new Mac Pro desktop, and a decade without an updated look for the desktop, the design-conscious folks at Apple have taken the opportunity to show their stuff and flex their muscles. The new ultra-minimalist design is a stark departure from the large silvery aluminum tower of the old Mac Pro, like the Apple Mac Pro (Xeon E5620). The new Pro still features an all-aluminum chassis, but that's likely the only similarity between the old and new.

The new Mac Pro is small and compact, a 10-inch tall cylinder (measuring 9.9-inches tall and 6.6-inches in diameter) that gleams and glistens like an artifact out of time, a piece of the future that's come to reside on your desk. We've reviewed other smaller desktops, like the Dell Precision T1700 SFF or the Falcon Northwest Fragbox (GeForce GTX 780 SLI), which put high-performance components into compact chassis designs, but the Mac Pro is in a class apart. The chassis is aluminum, inside and out, and it's dense, weighing 10.93 pounds. Between the sheer weight and the density of components inside, it's a lot heavier than it looks, but that weight only drives home the premium feel.
Though it appears to be burnished black in photos, it's more apt to call it a dark metallic greyApple calls it "Space Grey"almost a cross between glossy black obsidian and polished chrome. The result most resembles polished hematite, and the glossy surfaces pick up reflections from everything around it. It's a futuristic look indeed; and that's certainly the impression that Apple wanted the new design to deliver. From the first unveiling to the subsequent ads and private briefings, Apple has pushed the idea that this is the design of the future. But central to this sleek new look is a design that rests on two main concepts: a design built around Apple's Unified Thermal Core, and a paradigm that emphasizes expansion rather than upgrades. Let's look at each.
Beating the Heat
The first concept is Apple's new Unified Thermal Core, a design that leverages both materials and design for cooling the hot components that fit inside this gallon-sized desktop. Inside, all of the Mac Pro's components are mounted onto a triangular aluminum frame. Extruded as a single piece of metal and then milled to exacting specifications, the inner frame serves as the primary heat sink for the processor and graphics. The three-sided design has one board covered in ports, with two more on the other sides of the triangle. Inside, the empty space has its cooling capabilities enhanced further with heat-dissipating vanes. Sitting on top of the whole thing is an exhaust fan, designed to pull air up from intakes on the bottom of the case, up through the components and cooling vanes, and then through the fan, which pumps the now hot air out through the top.

While the Mac Pro takes thermal design to a new level, this sort of vertical airflow design isn't unheard ofwe've seen similar concepts in the Labs before, such as the Maingear F131 Super Stock (GTX Titan) which had a similar stovepipe design and aluminum chassis that helped to draw off heat from the components. The thermal design deeply influences the overall shape and look of the Mac Pro, but also allows the tiny chassis to house components that get much hotter than you would put into a comparably tiny small form factor desktop.
Expansion, Not Upgrades
The second concept is one of peripherals over upgrades. Apple's new paradigm does away with the easily accessible drive bays and swappable graphics cards of the previous modelslike the Apple Mac Pro (Xeon E5620) from 2010in favor of an external, modular approach. While you can still open up the case without having to reach for a screwdriver, you'll find far less opportunity inside for maintenance and upgrades. But that's not to say that it's entirely closed to the user; slide off the exterior shell of the chassis and you'll find access to four DIMM slots for RAM, as well as access to the internal PCIe-based flash storage. As for the processor or either of the graphics cards, both are tucked further inside, out of reach.
Upgradesin the sense that connecting external storage or peripherals is an upgradeare all done through the rear port selection. The primary feature on the otherwise blank exterior of the Mac Pro is the rear panel, which lights up for easy visibility whenever the tower shifts from its stationary position. On this panel, you'll find four USB 3.0 ports and six Thunderbolt 2.0 ports, along with two Gigabit Ethernet ports, an HDMI port, and jacks for headphone and audio line out.
While this lack of internal access and traditional expansion is significantly different from the standard workstation desktop, it is in keeping with Apple's overall approach in recent years. Looking at the Apple iMac 27-inch (Nvidia GeForce GTX 675M), for example, there's actually less opportunity for expansion, only providing access to RAM, and offering only two Thunderbolt ports for modular expansion.
Of the ports offered, it's the Thunderbolt ports that offer the most capability. Each Thunderbolt 2.0 port offers up to 20GBps of throughput, allowing you to connect not only individual monitors and small external drives, but giant RAID array storage, and PCI Express expansion. Makers of audio and video equipment have been working for months to come out with Thunderbolt-compliant equipment, along with support for better than HD video resolution. You can connect up to three 4K displays (or up to six regular Thunderbolt displays) through the Thunderbolt ports as well, and you can connect a 4K TV or monitor via HDMI. Thunderbolt also offers enough throughput to run multiple devices through a single port in a daisy-chain configuration.
The biggest concern about this new external modular approach to upgrading centers on the two major components you can't easily get to, and likely won't be able to service in-house: the processor and graphics cards. Apple's decision to go standard with dual-GPU systems will likely stave off the need to upgrade the graphics right away, but the fact that you can't upgrade or swap out the processor is still the large gaping hole in Apple's new strategy. It really becomes a question of how long the current hardware will be good enough. It may be cutting edge today, but will it still be in a year, two years? Apple will likely update the Mac Pro periodically for this very reason, but once your company has spent several thousand dollars on the Mac Pro, what you got is what you're stuck with.

Apple Mac Pro (2013)

Bottom Line: The Apple Mac Pro (2013) is a powerhouse in a surprisingly small package, leveraging innovative design and extreme connectivity to completely re-imagine the professional desktop workstation.

Brian Westover is an Analyst for the Hardware Team, reviewing laptops, desktops, and storage devices.
As a child, Brian was frequently asked "What do you want to be when you grow up?" His answer alternated between Superman and Batman. This was cute when he was five, but worrisome at seventeen. Naturally, he is now a journalist, writing about technology and gadgets.
Brian has been writing professionally since 2007, and his work has appeared in business newsletters, websites, textbooks, and magazines. He earned his degree in Communications from...
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